A thank you letter to CPS

I wrote a thank you letter to CPS.  For those parents who haven’t been visited by a social worker from Child Protective Services, it’s one of the scariest, most gut-wrenching knocks to open the front door to.  I was angry, hurt, embarrassed, sad, and suspicious.  Who would have reported me?  It was a no-contest after they interviewed my sons at their schools.  I was totally deluded, thinking that no one knew that I was a drug addict, especially not my sons.  Turns out just about everyone knew, and the only person fooled by my behavior was me.  When the boy’s mom and I met in the courthouse basement with the social worker in charge of the case, I couldn’t and didn’t fight it.  For once, I just accepted that I couldn’t talk or yell my way out of it. I was alone, completely alone, for the next two and a half months.  

Nothing else had served as a wake-up call to my addiction to Heroin.  Not my fiancee leaving, my brother moving out, or my parents trying desperately to get through to me so many times that they eventually stopped trying.  That feeling of shame, though? Of letting down my two best friends?  That broke me into pieces.  That was my rock bottom.  And so began the most painful stretch of my life: the withdrawals, the wave of emotional shame for the damage I’d done to others,, and the crippling loneliness.  Wallowing in an ocean of pain forced me to finally have an honest look at myself and accept what I’d done, and who I'd become.

A little over a year later, I walked to the front of the room and accepted my one year chip, clean and sober, in front of my entire family.  As I spoke, I burst into tears.  I saw my sons and daughters crying, my fiancee crying, and my ex-wife crying.  They were proud of me.  My sons were back with me.  My relationships were thriving, and I felt a prompt.  So I wrote a thank you letter to CPS.  Without their intervention, I would have surely died.  

It’s one of the most surprising things about my journey since then, but I’ve found that true gratitude has resulted from the hardest, ugliest moments of my life, and my ability to make living amends. The things that have broken me, the actions I’ve taken that have broken others, or the hurts I’ve experienced are the strongest catalysts for genuine change.  While I’ll never be proud of my behavior in addiction, I know that without my biggest mistakes, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.  From the son of a social worker, thank you CPS for saving my life, for being the catalyst that helped restore my family, and for the brave work that you do that is rarely ever complimented.